Confrontation's in the park (Open)

((OOC: took the liberty as it was marked 'open'... if that's not ok let me know )

Summer was meant for soaking. The sunshine seemed brighter in the park, the high-rise buildings not seeming to disrupt the atmosphere with shadows, the din of cars reduced to mere background noise. More and more, Verdy found, since she didn’t have to be outside, she was wandering back outdoors. For certain it was wonderful to have a warm place to stay for when winter was biting, and curling up in a bed while the rain was pouring down outside was a decided benefit, but still the outdoors seemed to call for her. Perhaps it was simply the lovely weather.

The park had its selection of different people as usual. Dog walkers, joggers, children playing sports and picnickers all milled in the wide space, moving, meeting, passing and moving on once more. Some lingered in areas longer than others, while some rushed to wherever they were going. She was just considering finding a nice bench in the sun to bask on when a flash of colour and movement caught her eye. A swirl of people not moving properly. A mob gathering.

The main focus seemed to be a man with blue skin. For a moment she saw Andy in the nervous way he clasped his hands, and she couldn’t walk past. Altering her course slightly and lengthening her stride from an amble to a trot she arrived as a man in a sling was standing up for the mutant. The main discriminator, a man with the look of someone who spent too much time pumping iron and not enough on anything else, seemed almost surprised that someone was standing up to him. His eyes flickered, and he seemed to be deciding whether to continue harassing the mutant, or to turn his attention to this interferer.

‘Safety in numbers’ was a mantra that had featured a lot in her time on the streets. No matter how much nicer it was to be alone, sometime being in public had that extra edge. Public didn’t seem to be working for bluey, and the mob mentality didn’t seem to be in favour of the mutant, despite the fact that he didn’t appear dangerous. Hidden mutations could be far more dangerous.

Deciding that sling-man could use a little backup she stepped up next to him, careful to keep her arms uncrossed, her hands loose and hanging gently by her sides. If the man felt threatened, he might decide that they were just as easy targets as the visible mutant. She eyed the hunched blue form, he didn’t look like the type to attack without provocation (if at all) but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Has he actually done anything to distress you? Or is it just the way he looks?”

She scrutinised the hulking form, trying to place which team it was that his jersey supported. If he wanted to start bringing in looks, she could start countering provided she had examples he would understand. The crowd shifted uneasily. One target, visibly different, was easier to hate than two reasonable adults.

“You may have noticed, that even if he could kill you in an instant he hasn’t. Bigotry and genecism only shows fear and an admittance of your inferiority. Give up, leave him be, go home.”

She wasn’t sure if the man understood all the words she had used. Her final sentence held only simple directions, in the hope that if nothing else sunk in, that would. Perhaps he would listen to logic, perhaps not, but at least now the odds were better and some of the outer mob members shrunk away, as if they had never been involved in the first place.

She guessed the gun comment was in relation to what the ‘cripple’ had said, but the Einstein comment was inescapably directed to her. She frowned slightly, it was most definitely fear that prompted this man’s bigotry and she felt almost sorry for him for a moment. His differentiation between mutants and ‘normal’ people however quashed what little pity she had.

“I don’t know any of those things.”

She gave a meaning loaded grin.

“Except that I don’t shoot lasers when I sneeze.”

That was enough provocation, really she should have restrained herself, but the temptation had been too much, if he had said another mutation a little further from her own she may have let it slide, but with an opportunity like that…

“However, even if any of us could do any of those things, nothing has happened. There are no lasers and no-one’s dead or abnormally dehydrated. In fact, no-one is being hostile at all, except you. The government tried to licence mutants, remember the registration act?”

There was a collective intaking of breath from many of the crowd members, and a few more slunk away from what she could hear behind her.

“It was abolished, and after all that happened in the camps you should know better than to bring it up.”

The tinge of a frown was full-blown now, arms that had been hanging crossed over her chest. Media coverage of what had happened in the camps had been frantic once the truth got out. Rapes, murders, all kinds of horrible things done to mutants simply for carrying the x-gene be they child, adult or something in between. For the man to bring it up, especially in the presence of a known mutant, was highly tactless.

“It is impossible to restrain, contain or licence mutants. If anyone should stay at home it’s you sir. Stay home where you’re ‘safe’, ‘cause no matter the urges if someone is going to kill you, mutant or not, they won’t be the one staying indoors.”

Her lip curled with distaste, bigots got to her, be they religious, gene-haters or of a different breed entirely. She would have to book an appointment with Hunter and ask how to hold her tongue, to dissolve fights before they began. Blessed be the peace makers? They had a damn hard job, and deserved to get to heaven, if such a place existed.

That someone, anyone, could believe that what had happened in the camps was justified was a disturbing thought, and Verdy briefly wondered if he was associated with the church of humanity. From what she had heard, their views were much the same as this man’s. The man in a sling also seemed to be affronted, and disputed the hulk-man’s claim. The muscled menace was having none of it, though, and moved him forcefully out of the way, before shoving Verdy too.

Her preservation instinct refused to let her fall to the ground. She teetered for a moment, righted herself and shoved one hand into her pocket, grabbing a handful of the marbles that rested there. Despite now having a safe place to rest at night, somewhere where no-one could approach and harass her, she still carried some physical protection around with her. It was never certain if she would need them, and the dull ‘clink’ of glass on glass was reassuring.

The sling man’s levitation was unexpected, but it didn’t distract her as her other hand swung up and faced, palm open, at the bigot. The symbol for ‘stop’, and the easiest way to release the marbles which rested in her left palm. His attention, turned from the cowering blue form, seemed fixed on the recently outed mutant and his face tensed, as if about to charge at him instead. The choice between a visible mutant with power unknown, and this for-all-appearances-human mutant with a disability and power of levitation weighed on his mind for a moment, and Verdy took the second’s pause to out herself as well.

“As a fellow freak I can’t let you do that. You can’t tell, but I have shotgun hands. I don’t want to hurt you, but you reject reason. Take warning, go home, no-one should get hurt today.”

It was a big call. She wasn’t sure what a shot from point-blank range would do to a man, but she was fairly certain it wouldn’t be pretty. Despite being a bigot, the man didn’t need to die, and she was determined not to have his life on her conscience. It was more reasonable to hit him in the arm or leg, maybe even a glancing blow, but only if he advanced, if he turned tail and ran, as any sensible person would when confronted with their greatest fear.

The threat of a three-fold mutation attack- or at least a two-fold, the blue man seemed more content to let herself and the man in a sling deal with it- should have scared the mutant hater off for good. It worked on most of the gathered crowd, their quick disappearance was more benefit than loss, with them gone the odds were in the freaks’ favour. The man eyed each of the mutants, as if deciding which would be the best to eliminate first. She tensed as his eyes flicked over her, then back to the others. Finally, making a sound akin to a cornered wild animal, he chose and charged at her.

Everything happened very quickly.

The man ran at her, death in his mindset prompted by fear.

The skin-coloured male mutant made a quick hand movement.

A yell in the air.

Her own palm flung a marble where the man had been not a second before, missing as he flipped into a skidding belly-flop.

The blue man made a strange sound, somewhere between a whimper and a moan.

Her attention wavered, resting for a moment on the blue-skinned mutant, ensuring he was well out of the way of her missed trajectory. It was a moment too long. Her eyes away from the man in the grass his hand whipped out and snatched her foot like an angry snake. Once his fingers found purchase around her ankle he gave an almighty tug, yanking her towards the ground. She fought to right herself, swinging her arms wildly, but the second it took to yank her hand out of her pocket was enough to throw her off balance and land her with a sickening thud on the ground.

Lungs screamed at her to breathe, her mouth open but not sucking in air she barely had the mindset to place a well-aimed kick at the side of the man’s head with her other foot. Thankfully he was trying to struggle to his feet, probably to stamp her mutant body into the earth, and his own momentum should have added to the resounding thwack if her foot connected. After less than a second, which seemed to drag on into eternity and back, her body forgave her and she gasped in the precious air, sweet with the smells of grass and earth. Another almighty kick-this time from her captured foot- and she yanked herself into upright, moving swiftly back to standing, albeit still wheezing air into her bruised body.

A quick mental checklist. Everything was intact, she was ok.